China’s travel booking platform ctrip.com has removed the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Shanghai from its listings after the chain’s Paris venue banned the Chinese national flag during the 2024 Summer Olympics, sparking an Internet furor.
The story — which had garnered 110 million views on Sina Weibo — had since been removed from the platform’s list of most popular posts.
On Monday, a Chinese influencer known as Instructor Zhang (張教官) accused the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Paris of refusing his request for the Chinese flag to be displayed at the venue in a video uploaded to TikTok.
Photo: Screen grab from the Web site of the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Paris
A person purported to be a Chinese chef employed at the hotel was shown in the video as saying that the hotel’s Taiwanese general manager had ordered the staff to remove a Chinese flag previously flown there.
The video went viral on Chinese social media, with Sina Weibo briefly listing “Evergreen Laurel Hotel’s Taiwanese manager cut down a red five-starred flag” as its second-most-popular search term.
Guoshi Zhitongche (國是直通車), an outlet affiliated with China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency, shared the video on Weibo, noting that Taiwan and China are listed as the same territory in the hotel’s booking system for the Asia region.
Beijing officials and state media gave no comments regarding the controversy in a rare display of reticence.
When asked, Evergreen Hotels, which manages the hotels, said the franchise was sorry for failing to provide the best possible experience to its customers, adding that it is taking steps to ensure all patrons would be properly accommodated.
The franchise issued a separate statement in China admitting that its handling of the situation was “less than perfect” and that the corporation “does not wish to see the incident negatively impact the goodwill between the peoples across the strait.”
Commenting on condition of anonymity, a hotel employee in Shanghai said ctrip.com has apparently blocked key terms relating to the establishment, preventing potential customers from accessing its listing on the travel booking site.
The hotel’s official Web site remains available to the public, they said.
The Central News Agency has independently verified these claims.
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